NS13 represents a complete paradigm shift, full of hyper-evolved Web 2.0-enabled RPG synergy. It's also a great big content update for KoL. Biggest one ever. Bigger even than the ascension rollout, in terms of sheer volume of new stuff.

What are we adding?

The most obvious change is that the Naughty Sorceress quest is moving to level 13, and there are two new Council quests for levels 11 and 12. They're both huge, sprawling, epic, and come equipped with several chocks full of awesomeness. This awesomeness includes:

A bunch of new zones. Let's call it 30ish.

More than 400 new items, over 100 new monsters, and at least 20 new trophies.

Content additions to many of the early-game Council quests.

A brand-new Guild quest, with a new boss and some neat rewards.

New, more interesting challenges and rewards in Fernswarthy's Basement.

A completely revamped and content-rich Bounty Hunter Hunter.

Small content updates in nearly every existing zone.

A new Casual ascension type -- no Ronin, no Hagnk's, just reincarnate and keep playing.

As you probably know, some of the rationale for doing NS13 in the first place was to slow down the pace of the speed game -- we never meant for people to be doing one and two day ascension runs of any kind. We basically want to increase the minimum turn and day counts of ascension runs so that we don't have to hold back introducing new content or mechanics for fear of speeding things up to the point where they're totally broken.

So, in addition to all the new content, NS13 will also encompass a bunch of other changes that you'll mostly notice if you play the game for balls-out speed. Sentiment in the forums is somewhat pessimistic about these "nerfs," but please take this to heart: We're not taking the game you love and ruining it for no good reason -- we're making an earnest attempt to make it a better game. A lot of the current avenues for optimal play are time-consuming and boring, and we don't want competitive play to be boring.

Some changes are still a little bit up in the air, as we've got a lot of tweaking and balancing to do during the 30-day testing period. But, so that you'll have an idea of what things will be like after the rollout, here are the biggest things we're doing to the speed game:

You will get 40 turns after ascending instead of the 80 you get now.

You will no longer retain a full-weight familiar through the Gash.

Food, booze and spleen items will have level requirements for consumption (primarily preventing the best stuff from being pulled and consumed on day 1 of a softcore run).

The autosell value of gift shop items will be significantly reduced.

The lower-level quests will be more involved than they used to be, and as such will take more turns to complete.

The Haunted Gallery will be made somewhat less important to the speed game, one way or another.

Epic Weapons will be Meatsmithed instead of Meat pasted, and will also be rebalanced and made a bit more... complicated.

Many skills are being tweaked, across the board, and classes are getting a bit more differentiation.

And last, but not least: No more stasis. That particular bush will finally get a direct beating.

Remember: The dev team, currently hard at work testing this stuff, is made up of dedicated and talented players, just like you. If they say that one of our decisions makes the game no fun, we will revise and re-tweak until the fun comes back.

Questions

This will surely generate some discussion in the forums, and we'll try to keep this post updated with answers to the most common and pressing questions that players have, so that the non-forum-going public will be kept in the loop. In the meantime, get your countdown timers a-runnin': NS13 is nigh!